Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

Alison’s Birthday

Alison’s Birthday. Ian Coughlan, 1981.

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Edition screened: Included in Severin Blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror, released 2021. English language. Runtime approximately 97 minutes.


Summary: No animals in the film.


Alison’s Birthday is a surprisingly watchable film, something of an ABC Afterschool Special companion piece to Rosemary’s Baby. It is supplemented by an 18-minute video essay “The Devil Down Under: Satanic Panic in Australia from Rosaleen Norton to Alison’s Birthday”, which traces the hysteria about alleged Satanism in popular culture from its moronic roots in the U.S to Australia’s film industry. Entertaining, nostalgic, and informative.


The Alison’s Birthday BD in the box set also features Ann Turner’s 1989 Celia and The CSIRO Film Unit’s 1979 The Rabbit in Australia.


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